


Last Breath

by JC_Lately



Category: Power Rangers in Space
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate scene interpretation, Assisted Suicide, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JC_Lately/pseuds/JC_Lately
Summary: It is not enough to feel regret for hurting people in the past. One must also make amends.Zordon of Eltar was no exception to this rule.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Last Breath

**Author's Note:**

> In a fandom no doubt filled with takes on “Zordon’s last moments”, here is one more.

_Maybe now…_

From the moment he made up his mind, it would take Andros approximately three seconds to complete his strike. An eternity. A blink of an eye. Time never had been Zordon’s friend. Rita had seen to that.

_...after all this time..._

How many worlds? How many battles? In his last seconds, he could see them all, reflected in the misma of the warp, concave against the crystal pillar that surrounded him. He could see them all, and didn't remember a single one. How had he survived to this point, more than than ten thousand years since he first drew breath, when so many others hand not. When man or woman to his left or right were cut down, how had me made it? Was he special, was he gifted? He thought so once, And perhaps that was his first mistake. His own hubris, his own certainty in what he was doing. That his way was the right way. That anyone would see that, given time. Even Rita.

_...and all my mistakes...._

The war raged across the heavens, but the climax happened on the natural satellite of the most insignificant of worlds. Rita's army had been broken, reduced to handful of generals. She sued for peace. Like a fool, he accepted the offer. So young. So proud. So stupid. The curse was swift. He didn't even feel it as he was thrust beyond hope and reach, a formless temporal void in which he has dwelt ever since. There was no telling how long he dwelt there before his armies were able to construct the communication dais, the crystal cylinder that allowed to communicate with 'real' time. It could have been an eternity. But when they had done it, he was ready. There was work to do, work to ensure that the tyranny of Rita, defeated and sealed even as he had been exiled, would not be repeated. The universe had to be made ready.

_...and all those deaths..._

He worked and planned, even as his loyal troops slowly began to abandon him, back to the lives they put on hold before his war. They didn't see the need for vigilance. Rita was gone, the war was over. He though them near-sighted fools then. Now that he understood, he was jealous of them. They had lives. He could no longer make such a claim. But the time warp proved to be a blessing (ha!). He had an eternity to prepare for the return of Rita – and threats worse still. Weapons were created and sealed away, all over the known galaxies, including the unremarkable world's unremarkable spiral galaxy. His troops dwindled down until only robots, programed with unflinching loyalty, remained.

Evil returned. Not not the evil he expected, lesser darkness – a shade really – but he was ready. His troops had long since lived and loved and died, leaving him behind. But he had the tools to recruit more. Young ones. Old enough to understand. Young enough not to be distracted by life. He gave them the power he had been securing, and dubbed them his Rangers.

Rangers went out. They fought. They won. But sometimes, they died.

_...perhaps the time has come..._

They looked up to him as more than leader. As mentor. A father. He sent them do their deaths, year after year, century after century. Evil had to be fought, did it not? And he could no longer do it. He was trapped in Rita's little hell, just as surely as the witch herself was sealed in her dumpster. His loyal cadre of robots had dwindled down to a single maintenance bot. Rangers came, Rangers fought, Rangers died. The survivors wept, and grieved. Then donned their helmets and fought again. Until one day, a Pink Ranger through her morpher at him it a fit of grief and rage, her team of five having been reduced to three. “Who are you,” she demanded of him, “that we should die at your word?”

And he had no answer. For who was he?

A man he had been once. Now a chessmaster, stacking the board against an opponent already beaten. And what had the fight even been for? What had he been striving to protect from the return of evil?

Life. The very thing he had denied his Rangers.

The reality of it cut him to his core. Oh, but Rita was a clever wench. By trapping him outside time, she had removed from him is ability to empathize with his fellow man. Making him and outsider, in effect stole his soul. But the realization came far too late. He was stuck by his own well-laid plans, his entire existence and that of his sole surviving robot, was built around the eternal struggle. He was trapped by his own effectiveness. And the galaxies needed their Rangers, depended on them like a police force.

How many children – for that is what they are, by the Grid – did he send to die? Scores. But now, now the fear and horror sank in.

Because now he cared. But he saw no escape.

Then the very thing he had prepared for happened: Rita escaped.

_...to atone. Then, finally..._

He called for the children of the insignificant world (it has a name!). And they came. And they looked up to him like a mentor and a father. And he looked at them as the children he could have have. They were his greatest Rangers ever. But he had he learned his lesson. Three times he offered them an out, a chance to have normal lives. They refused. The fourth time he made it an order. For their own good.

But this too was a mistake. Their replacements were valiant but lacked the experience and creatively of their predecessors And it all came tumbling down around him. Ten of thousands of years of planning, unraveling, collapsing, broken and lost by evil he had not expected. An Alliance of darkness, created to solely to counter him. He had been outplayed, and all creation itself placed in check. Then, the final indignity: he was captured himself.

His imprisonment gave him time to think.

When he fought with no regard to who he was hurting, he was victorious, but alone.

When he welcomed his troops like a family he was whole, but the victories unraveled.

He had taken it upon himself to lead the fight against evil. Assumed the weight of countless galaxies and civilization and lives beyond counting on his shoulders simply because he believed he was right. But all the missteps, lined with broken bodies of dead Rangers and civilians had only one constant: Himself.

And he knew what he had to do.

_…to rest._

Andros' sword was coming down. Zordon gathered all his power. Half of the Grid, the spiritual energy that had only grown exponentially in the millennia of his imprisonment. He held it tight to his core, drew in the miasma of the warp. Tighter and tighter within till he thought he would explode.

_For my fellow Eltarians who died when I survived._

__

__

_For the Pink Ranger that asked me a question I could not answer._

_For the children I sent to die._

_For the ones I freed so they could live._

_This is my last chance._

_I, Zordon of Eltar, shall make this right_.

The crystal pillar shattered.


End file.
